Waiting in line for Shia LaBeouf

Unlike NYU and Columbia, Hunter doesn’t have celebrities roaming the halls. We don’t have Sprouses or Francos or Pharrells gracing our campus with their presence. Vin Diesel and two members of The Strokes went to Hunter. That’s something, but that was before they became famous. We have to seek them out.

I have a feeling Hunterites get more excited when they see a celebrity. Even then, the famous who actually do enter Hunter may be met with some scorn. Former Director of the CIA David Petraeus had a stint as an adjunct professor for Macaulay Honors in 2013, and that ended with a rally and a poor protester getting punched in the face. So much for celebrities at Hunter.

When the chance came to meet Shia LaBeouf, a few Hunter students got excited and some talk spread around the halls. The actor and artist is currently doing a three-day project with Rönkkö & Turner titled “#ALLMYMOVIES” (link to the livestream of his face) in Angelika Film Center in Greenwich Village, where all 27 of his movies are playing in backwards chronological order for almost three days straight.

I’m a huge fan of Shia, and see his stunts as responding to the stuffiness of the constant media coverage of celebrities. He is doing and expressing whatever he wants.

Since no famous persons roam Hunter, and since I love Shia, I decided to check out the event for myself. I went last night, but there was a solid line that wrapped the lobby of the theater and stretched just outside its doors. It was 9pm, and I went home thinking of a battle-plan. I would wake up at 6am and be there at 7.30am. If all went according to plan, I’d sit next to Shia, share popcorn with him, watch a movie for half an hour, give him a can of Red Bull that I’d buy (he’d need it), and walk out.

Sheer optimism, however, can be really stupid.

I woke up at 7.30am and ended up in the queue at 11.30am. I had only five dollars and was thus too broke to buy a bag of popcorn and the Red Bull. Normal movie theaters charge a fortune for a bag. Angelika is a filmhouse that shows independent and foreign films. The popcorn bags are smaller and priced around the same.

The line moved slowly but surely, or so it seemed. It coiled around the ribbon barriers about four times, but I saw no one enter the theater. People were sitting in the line. Some were nose-deep into books they were reading. Some were busy chattering away about other movies. Some had their laptops out. One guy lugged a chair from the cafe in the lobby and perched himself on it.

The guy next to me met his friend, who told him: “The people in the front have been waiting for like eight hours, since like 4 in the morning.”

“They’re also not letting people use the restroom.”

A theater worker came by, looking too tired for the morning, and gave his spiel about no cell-phones in the auditorium.

“Be strong. You guys got this. Oh look, the line is moving!”

The line moved a foot.

A guy in a trenchcoat, with a scarf and a hat on his head, rallied those waiting with a play on Shia’s monologue: “IF YOU THINK YOU CAN’T WAIT ANOTHER SEVEN HOURS, JUST DO IT! YES YOU CAN!”

A minute after that, the ribbon barrier in front of me snapped and fell to the ground. I saw that as a sign, moved past the people waiting in line, and walked out the door.

Some people get lucky with timing, however. I interviewed Lucas Lowman (22, Media Studies -Critical Analysis), a Hunterite who actually got in on the first day and sat two seats away from Shia from 6 pm to 3:15 am.

“He never talks. The crowd is great. They’re there to watch the movie too.

“A movie would happen. They would roll the entire credits – that’s a break. People would like get up and stretch and go to the concessions. And then the movie would just start again. You’d come back, sit down. He [Shia] has like one seat and the camera is looking at him.

“As the night went on, it was interesting to see how many people stopped watching the films and started watching Shia. It was cool because, at first, people are like glued to the screen. But as the night went on – even me, I found myself doing this – they’re looking at Shia more and more, seeing his reactions.

“Especially with ‘Nymphomania’, I’m watching Shia watch Shia have sex, y’know? Like what is that?

“One thing I realized while watching all of his movies is that Shia plays the same pick-up artist where he’s really blunt with the girls he talks to in his films and he’s really cheeky and stuff. And every time that would happen, we’d all look at Shia and he’d have this smirk on his face.”

“There’s times in ‘Lawless’ where he gets his ass beat and we’d look at him to see what he’s thinking of like being betrayed – how would you feel watching your ass get beat right on screen? – and he’s watching pretty intently.”

“At 3 in the morning, he got out of his seat, went to the back of the theater, puts on like this hoodie, and like sleeps.”

Lucas saw “Nymphomaniac, Volume 1”, “Charlie Countryman”, “The Company You Keep”, “Lawless”, and “Transformers: Dark of the Moon”.

To the troopers who stood for seven hours in the front of the line by the time I was there, and those who joined the line and made it, I salute you and your obsession.

As much as I like Shia, and as much as this is an interesting piece of artistic expression, the half hour I spent waiting in line made me realize that you have to be really passionate about something like this. About following a celebrity and waiting since before sunrise to sit in the same room as a famous person who is ultimately just another person. Most of us tend to forget that celebrities are just people. And all people have things to do. I wasn’t about to wait for seven hours to sit in the same room as Shia Labeouf and watch a movie. Sharing popcorn and giving the man a Red Bull was a fantasy and is staying that way. Celebrities are people, and I’ve got my own things to do.

If you want to still “JUST DO IT”, however, head to Angelika Film Center at 18 West Houston Street.